The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky

Mark Kurlansky unearths some old, tasty American recipes

By Greg Morago |
May 17, 2009

It’s hard enough to become a famous food writer when your country is in the midst of an economic meltdown. It’s even harder when your work is never published.

But that’s precisely what happened to talented food writers across the country who were part of an ambitious project to document regional foods, eating habits and traditions of World War II America. That project, America Eats (part of the WPA’s Federal Writers Project, which gave jobs to thousands of writers during the Great Depression) was scuttled when the nation entered the war, leaving a mountain of unedited pieces covering traditional dishes, cooking techniques and dining customs from every corner of the country. It was never published.

Food writer Mark Kurlansky unearthed that treasure trove of culinary Americana — everything from Arkansas ash cakes and Arizona menudo patties to Vermont sugaring and Wisconsin sourdough pancakes — represented in The Food of a Younger Land. The book is a delectable slice of culinary anthropology.

Kurlansky, author of fascinating histories of foodstuffs such as cod, salt and oysters, supplies context and background to these essays and recipes from writers forgotten and writers celebrated (Eudora Welty and Zora Neale Hurston were on the America Eats project). But the pieces also speak volumes on the way we ate before the Food Network: squirrel stew, oyster roasts, pulled candy, lutefisk suppers, vinegar pie, beaver tails and poke sallit. While you don’t need an essay on the Automat to tell you times have changed, the book’s piece on the famous coin-operated food-dispensing restaurant is like stepping into a culinary time warp.

The Food of a Younger Landcomes at a time when America is interested in seasonal, locally grown produce and, once again, faces a sagging economy. If there ever was a time we need a recipe for Depression Cake, it’s now.